So it’s not so much that I haven’t been working on this (I have, really, I should be at day like 150+), but it’s been hard going. Sometimes I come up with answers, ideas, inspiration and fixes by ploughing forward, pushing for solutions. But a lot of the time, they come to me sideways. They like to sidle up in my peripheral vision when I’m not looking in their direction, and then I have to breathe slow and resist the temptation to stare until I can hold on to their afterimage. All that to say, I’ve spent the majority of the last week or so watching TV, reading books, and building up my IG and Goodreads accounts (yay almost 400!) -and then feeling horribly guilty and panicking for not working hard enough and being behind schedule, and then actually getting a bit of progress in near the end of the day, where I can sleep on it and improve in the morning, until my editor kicks my stuffing out and the cycle starts over.
Yay rewrites.
Just finished The Curiosities. I was up until 4 am last night/this morning with it too. Mad (the crippling kind) brilliant, but also inspiring. It’s kick-started at least two ideas or writing sessions, and there’s a sequel that I’ll start on tonight. The last 5 craptastic books I read were also inspiring, in a different way.
I’m a little depressed. I’m a little stuck. I’m a little anxious. It’s been raining. I don’t know how to identify feelings (my own) or remember that other people have emotions. I’m too much like Cole. I don’t understand Cole. I don’t understand storytelling. I’m a drama queen in a wallflower’s skin with a berserker’s heart and a painted mouth.
I feel hopeless and addicted. I’m not good enough. I can totally do this. I just need to work harder. I just need to hang on. I just need to be somebody different, and it’d all be better.
I’m a writer. I’m a teller of stories. I’m a creator. I exist. The quality of me and mine is a different matter. Which matters. But not as much as I matter.
I think it’s stupid when people say you should write for yourself. Don’t they know all I have to do is turn my gaze inside? Why would I go to the trouble of sorting and pinning and cataloguing ideas for myself when they’re vital and alive and mercurially bouncing around the space inside?
I write for myself, to make sense of the ideas and images and thoughts and impressions and sensations that aren’t quite feelings or emotions but something more nebulous. To make of the tangled mess something that resonates for someone else, that tells them they’re both less special and unique and singular, and more at the same time.
I’m a living contradiction who believes in absolute truth. Singularity. Trinity. Three in one but not one in three.
I’ve been reading too much poetry.
Or something. It might be the four hours of sleep last night… or the gin.
I went outside yesterday. In the dark, behind the locked gates. Trash out, trash in, a tiny golden key, a chore, an escape, an excursion. I don’t know if I’ll go out today. I probably won’t.
There are books and deadlines and chores and temptations. I will go out tomorrow.
Friday
Start time: 4pm
Location: Abbotsford, couch/living room